What Do You Do When Your Best Friend Acts Bipolar?

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Who among us hasn't been walloped by a best friend's mood swing? But we think Lily_LoveisLouder has got it worse than most... –Sparkitors

What do you do if one of your best friends changes her mood like every five minutes? One minute she’s all smiling and life is peachy keen, and the next, she’s staring at you like you’re freaking Hades or something? Jump out of the math classroom window? Wear a camouflage jumpsuit? Hide in a pile of leaves? All of those solutions seem incredibly appealing compared to dealing with your best friend, the 16-year-old psychopath.

Yes, I myself have this problem. Let’s call this nutty friend “Amy.”

Like last week, we had to do this group term project for Spanish class that involved gathering information and creating charts. Life was good! Until one of our friends misspelled a word on the chart. Amy turned on us with an evil alien look in her eyes, and told the teacher that the mistake was all our fault. Then, wouldn't you know it: five minutes later, she was apologizing profusely to us for her behavior, almost in tears. Her behavior is DRIVING ME MAD!

So what do you do when your best friend acts this way?

Solution 1: Confront her.

I tried this tactic, and it didn’t go well. The conversation started with me coming up to her and saying this in a discreet voice: “Amy, do you notice that sometimes you act…different?”

She just chewed on her gum and looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes. “What do you mean, Lily?”

I sighed, bracing myself for the blow I was about to receive for telling her the truth. “I mean how you’re all happy one minute, then you're the polar opposite of happy the next..." I trailed off uncertainly.

Amy chewed her gum once more, a thoughtful look on her face. I waited for her reaction: a slap in the face, a shove, a burst of manic laughter or tears, but instead she got up from her desk and grinned. “You’re delusional, Lily. I know what’s going on: you’re PMS-ing, you poor thing!” Then she grinned once more and exited the classroom, leaving me to tear at my hair and pick up my books and hurry off to AP American History.

Solution 2: Try to act normal when she acts crazy.

This one actually ended in my being physically injured. We were talking about Vampire Diaries and comparing Damon and Stefan, and she was all smiley and joking and rainbows and sunshine, until I said that Damon was hotter than Stefan. A devilish spark went off in her eerie Team-Stefan blue eyes as she stood up, towering over me. I shrank back instantly. “WHAT.DID.YOU.SAY?” she demanded, hands on her protruding hips.

“Damon is hotter than Stefan,” I repeated, nonchalantly, cause I wanted to try acting natural when she got into one of her crazy trances.

When she started to yell insults and shove my shoulder every few seconds, I knew she was having one of her more erratic episodes. She got a crazy look in her eyes and finally stormed off, giving me one final shove. I gained nothing from this experience but a bruised shoulder.

Solution 3: Get other people to talk to her about it.

I decided to try involving more of my friends with this dilemma, because it was getting to be too much. I asked my close friend Margaret to talk to Amy about her insane mood swings, and she agreed reluctantly. So next math class, when we were all waiting for the teacher to come to class, Margaret marched up to Amy with a determined look in her eyes. I watched closely, seeing that Margaret was doing all the talking, until suddenly, Amy pushed her desk away, burst into tears, and ran out of the room. I shot Margaret a “What the hell did you do?” look, and she just shrugged, and I was left to follow my sobbing best friend out of the room.

So what, you ask, is the solution to this crazy dilemma? The truth is… I don’t know.